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Self-styled ‘Papa Smurf’ who used van full of dolls to entice kids jailed in UK for 16 years for child rape
18 Dec 2020 21:02
© Reuters / François Lenoir
A Derbyshire man who drove around in a white van showing off his 11,000-strong Smurf collection to kids has been sentenced to 16 years in prison after being found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting a child.
Robin White, a 65-year-old retired truck driver, was handed a 16-year sentence and a lifetime sexual harm prevention order on six counts of rape, of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, and of indecent assault on a child.
Now an adult, his accuser shared with the court her experience of being assaulted with a sex toy and raped in a garden shed by the van-driving pervert at a young age. Prosecutor Julia King described how the victim had been left with “severe psychological harm” over the “degrading and humiliating” experience.
“She says she is unable to trust anyone fully and that this has had an impact on every aspect of her life,” King said, adding that the victim even stayed away from certain places lest she encounter the predator. The judge agreed, declaring White had “blighted [the victim’s] life in every way.”
White, who had pleaded not guilty to the charges, spent several years amassing his massive Smurf collection and claimed it was the largest in existence. He supposedly spent upwards of £2,000 purchasing the blue dolls at rummage sales and flea markets, and kept over 10,000 of them in his van.
The convicted pedophile would drive around to schools and nurseries, showing off his collection to lure unsuspecting kids into his van.
Pornhub sued by dozens of victims of infamous ‘Girls Do Porn’ XXX website
16 Dec 2020 14:20
Pornhub’s terrible December has gotten even worse as its parent company has been hit with a lawsuit by 40 victims of the infamous ‘Girls Do Porn’ website seeking more than $40 million in damages.
The lawsuit claims that Pornhub owner Mindgeek knowingly benefited from Girls Do Porn videos on Pornhub and failed to moderate the images on its network of adult content sites.
The 40 plaintiffs are demanding more than $40 million in damages along with legal fees and the money Mindgeek earned off their videos.
Girls Do Porn was shut down by the FBI in 2019 after a court ruled that its owners were guilty of coercing women into having sex on video, as well as lying about whether those videos would be shared online.
“As a proximate result of MindGeek’s knowing financial benefit and participation in GirlsDoPorn’s sex trafficking venture, Plaintiffs have suffered damages, including, but not limited to, severe emotional distress, significant trauma, attempted suicide, and social and familial ostracization,” the complaint states.
The complaint, which was filed yesterday, claims that as early as 2009, “and definitely by fall 2016,” Mindgeek knew Girls Do Porn was coercing and intimidating models into having sex on camera.
The suit points the finger at Mindgeek for much of the harm the victims' suffered. It presents several claims that Pornhub failed to take down videos, even after the women involved pleaded with the company to remove them.
“Im going to kill myself if this stays up here,” one of the Jane Doe plaintiffs claims to have written in Pornhub’s video takedown portal. “I was scammed and told this was only going to be on DVDs in another country. Please im begging you please ill [sic] pay!"
The complaint says that the video remained up until Girls Do Porn's owners were arrested in October 2019. The suit claims that Mindgeek received “dozens, if not hundreds” of similar takedown requests.
Pornhub announced major changes last week, including only accepting uploads from verified accounts and banning downloads, following reports that it was “infested” with child abuse and rape videos. However, the move appears to have come too late as Mastercard and Visa stopped processing payments for the site in the days after the changes were announced.
"Girls Do Porn" was, no doubt, a verified account, so had they not been shut down, they would still be acceptable to PornHub for uploads.
At least 250,000 children and adults physically and sexually abused in New Zealand’s state care institutions – inquiry
16 Dec 2020 09:10
Ministers address Maori protesters gathered to demonstrate against what they say is the disproportionate number of Maori children taken by social service agencies from their families, in Wellington, New Zealand, July 30, 2019. © Reuters / Praveen Menon
A public inquiry in New Zealand has revealed up to a quarter of a million children, young people and vulnerable adults were abused in the state care system and faith-based institutions from the 1960s to early 2000s.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry claimed in an interim report that many children suffered abuse for years by staff at psychiatric and state care facilities, clergy and foster guardians. Some cases of abuse included rape and electric shock treatment.
“The hurt and anguish that has been caused in New Zealand’s history is inexcusable,” Minister for the Public Service Chris Hipkins said.
Almost 70 percent of the children in care system are Maori, and the report said that among those most frequently abused were “most disadvantaged or marginalized segments of the community… particularly from Maori whanau [family], Pacific families, children from impoverished backgrounds, disabled people and women and girls.”
Most survivors were aged between 5 and 17 and most were abused over a five- to 10-year period, the report said. It also revealed that up to 256,000 people were abused, or almost 40 percent of the 655,000 people in care during that period. Most abuse, including physical assault and sexual abuse, occurred in the 1970s and 1980s.
Survivors cited a “culture of silence and secrecy” and many of them now suffer mental health issues.
The Catholic Church in New Zealand will study the report to understand how to deal with complaints and prevent abuse. The Archbishop of Wellington Cardinal John Dew said: “We are deeply sorry for the harm caused to so many by the abuse they suffered.”
The Royal Commission was announced in 2018, with PM Jacinda Ardern saying New Zealand needed to confront “a dark chapter” in its history.
Canada needs to do the same, but for some reason, Trudeau will have absolutely nothing to do with child abuse or child sexual abuse. In 5 years he has done absolutely nothing to address this exploding problem.
Man who watched girl be sexually abused by her step-father on Skype jailed
..
Sadistic images showed children being tied up and abused
Stephen Maguire
December 19 2020 02:30 AM
A man who went on a Skype call with other men to watch a young Irish girl being sexually abused by her step-father has been jailed for five years.
David Kelly appeared at Donegal Circuit Court, where he was charged with two charges of possession of child pornography and two charges of distribution of child pornography.
Kelly, a 38-year-old married man from Bundoran, was caught with thousands of images of children being abused, as well as videos of similar abuse.
Kelly, of Magheracar Cottages, was caught when the National Centre for Missing and exploited Children received a report that two images of children had been uploaded to a certain IP address. When Gardai raided his house on April 11 2016 he ran to the bathroom and tried to hide a laptop under the bath.
Gardai managed to access the computer and other software and Kelly made full admissions.
A month later on May 17, Kelly went to Gardai and provided them with details of his activities, including that of a man in Clondalkin in Dublin. The man was secretly filming his step-daughter as he abused her and was sharing the images and videos online with others.
Detective Garda Mark Deavin told the court that this man has since been convicted in the courts.
Of 180 movies found on Kelly's computers, 145 were category one, which meant they depicted children under 17 years engaging in sexual acts with children or adults. The other 35 movies were classed in category two, which showed children's genital or anal area but which did not show any sexual abuse.
Barrister for the State, Ms Patricia McLaughlin, also said how there were transcripts of Skype calls between Kelly and the man in Dublin. References were made to drugging the 13-year-old child so that she could be raped.
Kelly is also heard asking the man to drug and rape the child and requests that he record it on Skype so that it can be shared.
That must be a crime of serious consequences. Why do I not see it reflected in the charges?
The accused was also recorded asking the Dublin man to film himself abusing his nieces, who were aged between three and five years. "When you play with your nieces check you're on Skype, I would love to see you in action," Kelly is recorded as saying.
In total Kelly was caught with 2,032 images of child sexual abuse, 1,163 of which were in category one and 869 of which were in category 2.
While details of the case were being read out, Kelly, dressed in a blue suit and tie, with a pony-tail, sat in the court and showed no emotion. His mother and an unidentified man sat at the back of the courtroom at Letterkenny courthouse.
Barrister for Kelly, Mr Declan McHugh said it was difficult to know where to start and that he was not trying to excuse or lessen the seriousness of what Mr Kelly had done and the effects it had had on all the children involved.
He said his client is a changed man and said that this was not child pornography but child abuse. "He is deeply remorseful and ashamed of what he has done and is under no illusions about the gravity of it. He knows that society views these actions against children right up there on the scale of offences that we know," said Mr McHugh.
He had worked for 14 years in Dublin's Four Seasons Hotel but had returned to the seaside town in which he grew up. He walks through Bundoran with his head down as he is afraid of how people will approach him and his only sibling, a brother, has not spoken to him since he was found with the child abuse images and videos.
Judge John Aylmer said that the offences merited sentences of eight years, and five years putting them at both the higher range and mid-range of such offences.
He said the case deserved a sentence of eight years in prison.
However, in mitigation, he said Kelly came before the court with no previous convictions, he was remorseful and ashamed, had cooperated fully with Gardai and had received up to 36 counselling sessions as part of his rehabilitation.
On mitigation, he said he would reduce that sentence to six years in prison.
He added that he had to encourage Kelly to continue his rehabilitation and said he would suspend the final 12 months of that sentence upon agreement that the accused enter a bond to be of good behaviour for two years after he is released.
This means that Kelly will serve a total sentence of five years and was also placed on the Sex Offenders Register for ten years.
Former NT executive caught in international child abuse material ring
By Henry Zwartz, ABC
On an August morning last year just before 7:00am, detectives from the Australian Federal Police and Northern Territory Police knocked on the door of a unit in an up-market Darwin suburb.
Warning: this story contains details that may distress some readers
According to court documents, five days earlier US investigators had tipped off senior Australian police officials that the middle-aged man living in that unit could be accessing and sharing child sexual abuse material.
Police seized hard drives on which were a cache of more than 4,000 items of child abuse material, including videos and images of children, some as young as toddlers, being abused.
This month, Mark Friend was sentenced in the Northern Territory Supreme Court to seven years in prison.
During the case, the court heard he had accessed and shared the material with others through online forums including Telegram, Skype, Zoom, Peer-to-Peer and Mega, while sometimes high on methamphetamine.
Mark George Friend was a successful bureaucrat who went on a 'downward spiral' over the last six years. (LinkedIn)
The court was told that outwardly, Friend had a successful career, having worked in the NT public service and the not-for-profit sector, including as a coordinator for youth and family services in the Department of Health and an executive at Anglicare NT.
Before that, he held senior positions in the Northern Territory civil service including at the Central Australian Health Service, as well as a role at the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre.
But inwardly he was "spiralling" from 2013, or "a man living two lives" as described by his defence lawyer, as he grappled with the trauma of childhood abuse and the break-up of a relationship in 2015 as well as drug use.
Lawyer for the Commonwealth Krista Breckweg said in court that hundreds of individual children were the subject of the cache of child abuse videos and photos.
Dublin man found guilty of possessing child sex abuse images and videos
By Dublin People
Dec 18, 2020
A former bank worker caught with thousands of sexually explicit images of children told gardaí that he believed the images were of adults posing as children, a court has heard.
Robert Traynor (54) with an address in Crumlin, Dublin city pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of 1,938 images and 183 videos of “child pornography” on February 2, 2018. He also admitted production of 1,650 computer generated images on September 22, 2014, contrary to the 1998 child trafficking pornography act.
Detective Garda Thomas Burke told Elva Duffy BL, prosecuting, that as part of an ongoing garda operation into online child exploitation, a computer address was linked to the possession of “child pornography” images and videos in an online “peer to peer” network.
Traynor’s home was linked to this computer through his internet provider Eir and gardai went to the house in February 2018. Under caution Traynor told gardai that he had downloaded erotic material but said he believed the images and videos were of adults posing as children.
The court heard Traynor had searched for the images using the Tor browser, which allows users to hide their location.
If it was legal porn, why would he use Tor?
An external disk drive seized by gardai was found to contain 65 video files and hundreds of images, the court heard. These images showed girls aged between six and 12 posing for the camera where they were sexually exposed.
Over 2,000 computer generated images found in an encrypted folder depicted young girls using sex toys or lying next to naked males.
Traynor told gardaí after his arrest that the images were “skirting the boundaries” but were not “child pornography”, saying he believed they were actors posing as children.
Dt Gda Burke told Judge Pauline Codd that this was “clearly not the case” and that “they are quite obviously children”. He said some of the cartoon images depicted the girls much smaller in size and height than the males, saying “it’s clear they are young children”.
Micheal Hourigan BL, defending, told the court that his client had a good employment history and had previously worked in IT for a bank.
He said as a result of a health condition in his youth he became sexually isolated and his sexual development stifled. He has engaged with therapy since the offending came to light and has displayed progress in developing insight into the reasons behind his offending, counsel said.
Noting the absence of any previous offending Judge Codd ordered a probation report and adjourned sentence to March 12 next year.
Crumlin, Dublin
Victims reveal devastating impact of decades of abuse
as Sheffield paedophile jailed
Paul Degenhart abused 4 children in Sheffield between the 1980s and the early 2000s
Huddersfield examiner
A paedophile who abused four children in Sheffield between the 1980s and the early 2000s has been given a 34-year extended prison sentence.
Paul Degenhart, formerly of Raeburn Road, Sheffield, groomed and abused the victims, including by introducing them to drugs.
Sheffield Crown Court heard he took a vulnerable boy from London to Sheffield before he moved on to raping him with 'devastating physical and psychological' consequences.
The jury unanimously found him guilty of four counts of rape, two of a serious sexual offence, one of attempted rape, 20 of indecent assault and six of indecency with a child.
And what about the drug charges? Did we just forget about them?
Degenhart had two relevant and old previous convictions.
Today (Friday), he was told he must serve a custodial period of 31 years followed by a three-year period on licence.
The defendant was added to the sex offenders register for life but was not made subject to a sexual harm prevention order.
Degenhart, whose arms are tattooed, appeared in court via a video link from Doncaster prison where he appeared to make a note of his sentence on a white envelope.
Victims are still affected by the abuse
Prosecutor Michael Smith read victim personal statements to the court on behalf of a number of the victims. One of the victims said the abuse led to him struggling with drug abuse and being sent to prison.
Another one of the victims said the abuse affected his relationship with his partner, adding: "Sometimes I scrub myself until I get sore." He said that after reporting it to police the abuse was on his mind more and he got into gambling debt to keep his mind busy.
Another one of the victims said: "I have nothing but trouble with relationships . . . I believe the abuse has ruined my sex life. Intimacy is impossible." He said it caused him to be overprotective of his son to the extent that his partner told him that the only way to move on was to report the abuse to police.
He said he has conditions including ADHD, borderline personality disorder and depression, all of which he attributes to the abuse, and has made three attempts to take his own life.
Degenhart 'refused to accept responsibility'
Speaking after the conviction, Det Con Helen Barrett, of South Yorkshire Police, said: "I wish to firstly commend the victims in this case, who have each demonstrated tremendous bravery in relaying to the police details of their horrific sexual abuse.
"Degenhart refused to accept responsibility for his crimes, meaning those victims have also had to recount before a jury the awful things that were done to them as children. They carried themselves with dignity and were very courageous throughout this process.
"The jury has seen fit to return guilty verdicts on Degenhart’s awful crimes today, such was the strength of the victims' evidence put before the court. He groomed and abused his victims, repeatedly subjecting them to sexual violence and threatening them not to tell anyone.
“Degenhart has been convicted of serious sexual offences and I hope the victims are able to take some sense of closure and justice from this."
North Wales care worker plied vulnerable boy with alcohol and sexually abused him in isolated cottage
A care worker who sexually abused a teenage boy in his charge in an isolated cottage was today jailed for 10 years.
Lee O'Brien, 47, had plied the youngster who was under 16 years of age with alcohol and tried to cover up the smell on his breath the following day.
But he appeared to be sentenced today at Mold Crown Court with a judge telling him it was "as clear a case of abuse of trust as you can imagine".
The prosecution had told how the parents of the boy had been unable to cope with him and placed him in voluntary care.
The judge told O'Brien, of Henblas Road, Rhostyllen, Wrexham: "They weren't to know he was going to be sexually abused by his key worker in his very first placement."
The judge said O'Brien gave the boy alcohol "to lower his inhibitions, to reduce any prospect he might struggle (and) seriously sexually abused him in his bed".
O'Brien, who also gave the boy a tablet of some description, carried out various sex acts on the boy, who cannot be named to protect his identity.
The judge said the following day O'Brien took steps to disguise the smell of alcohol on the youngster's breath and "behaved as if nothing had happened".
He added: "He was in your care at that cottage and at your mercy."
His defence barrister said O'Brien is now faced with a "loss of reputation and embarrassment".
What about the boy?
The judge. the Recorder Mr Simon Mills, jailed O'Brien for attempted assault by penetration for ten years.
He was also jailed, to terms to run concurrently, for eight years for intentionally causing or inciting a person to engage in sexual activity, four years for sexual activity with a child and for six months for possession of indecent photographs of a child.
The judge also gave O'Brien an indefinite sexual harm prevention order.
After the case, North Wales Police praised the victim and welcomed today's sentences.
Detective Sergeant Anne-Louise Jones said: “North Wales Police would like to pay tribute to the victim in this appalling case for their courage in coming forward to report O’Brien’s crimes and having to face the ordeal of the court case.
"O’Brien is now behind bars where he belongs.”
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